


A Mutated Skyline

by calmlikesurrender



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Humor, M/M, Magic, Mild Gore, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-05-08
Updated: 2013-07-03
Packaged: 2017-12-10 18:54:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 13,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/789094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calmlikesurrender/pseuds/calmlikesurrender
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Liam is a werewolf, Harry is Louis’ apprentice, and Zayn and Niall own magic shops. I still can’t figure out if this is light or angst yet and I’ve read it a hundred times, so maybe it’s both?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

           When people say agony, they mean mundane.

_Work_  is agony, lugging briefcases and espressos through the office like Atlas.

           Liam wants to rip the heart out of anyone who’s ever used that word around him.  _You’re wrong._   _This._   _This is agony._

            He’d spend the next hundred full moons of his life sleeping through the change if he could. Instead, he’s trapped in this weak shell of skin while his bones snap and splinter and readjust. His veins running as dark as ink, so thick they thread through his core like rope.

           When this was new, he’d had so many questions but no one could answer them. “Magic” had been the most prevalent explanation. Then “dark magic” when he’d found the nerve to dig a little deeper than the downtown shops with neon signs.

           After all of his research, nothing changes. He’d been jogging through the park that morning around last Easter during his lunch break at work, doped up on spiked coffee but still half asleep when he almost bowled over a kid walking his pet rodent on a leash.

           Well, it had been a lap dog really, barely the size of the kid’s head and compensating for it by yapping like the dickens at everything that came within inches of it. The boy was a lanky mountain of pale skin and he kept on apologizing like it was his fault, but he never grabbed for his dog, though. If anything, Liam realized a bit later he’d seemed sort of scared of it. When the little furball tried to take a bite of Liam’s leg, the kid squeaked and jumped back.

          It would have been easy maybe to just talk to the kid afterward, but he could never find him again. He’d tried his damndest, too. Even so, Liam’s not sure he’d recognize him if he did see him again. All he can remember is a wrinkled school uniform, and the messiest nest of curls he’d ever seen. Besides, what would he say to him that could possibly sound sane?  _Hey, remember me? Your rat chomped on me and now I grow fangs every full moon._

          He takes every precaution to discredit yahoos who believe in things like this and then he turns into a werewolf himself. His mother had been the queen of ridiculous speculation. A conspiracy theorist with a bible in every room, Liam had thought packing his bags for New York when he was nineteen would spare him the melodrama, but then his life went to hell. Bad punch line to a pathetic joke.

         And through it all, the bite’s still just an enflamed scab. A nip at his ankle that he’d have shrugged off if he hadn’t changed three nights after. He learns so many things, but nothing  _helps_. He’s still a monster, stuck on a loop waiting for the moon to take control.

             The worst is his spine, he always thinks. In the beginning, he’d try and fight it. Now he knows better. He drives far and parks near a clearing on the outskirts of the forest, strips down and walks a while. He’s miles outside of the city when he feels the first strong pull. He steadies his breathing the best he can.

            It grows usually, but tonight there’s almost an urgency to the way his heart’s racing. It’s excruciating, but he bowls over and lets the ridges in his spine expand and the knots flatten out. Seconds at the most, but it lasts an eternity.

            His nails are next. The worst, he always thinks again. Everything’s the worst until the next part happens. His nails push out and the beds split into pieces to accommodate and he feels every bit of it, not with the dulled nerves of his dying human body, but the creature that’s taking over instead. Every rip is magnified by the sound of his cells splitting, his blood gorging on the weaker weight.

            Hair sprouts in thick tufts on his chest and back while his teeth are dislodged and he gags his way through his jaw reforming into a snout.

Each night the worst is his heart. It always comes down to it. Feeling it burst in his chest, seize up and make room for the lump of muscle that takes its place while he’s like this. Agony.

He’s never been eloquent- there wasn’t much cause for it in stocks and bonds- but agony feels fitting enough.

            And for a moment, it’s all he can think of. A loop of it. Pain Pain Pain. Until the shivers turn to shakes and he sniffs past the sharp stench of dead blood to the earth behind it. Coughs up the wet remains of his throat and whatever else. It’s a sopping mess. He nudges it with his nose. Wonders for a moment about eating it.

            There’s no real contemplation when he’s like this. No words. It’s instinct mostly. He feels as much as the earth does, breathes with her. 

            It’s all stronger. More vivid. The same grass he’d tromped over barefoot is soft as silk beneath his paws now, a puddle of dew that mutes some senses, and helps him focus on the smells instead. The sounds. Something thumping in the bushes to his right. Fast, heart hammering away. It’s second nature, letting his mind take control. Then it’s the next morning.

            Blood never bothered him before, but now he hates everything about it. The taste, the smell, the feel of it settling in his stomach as he jolts awake in the bed of the truck he’d borrowed from his friend’s lot.

            He blinks until his eyes adjust to the sun overhead. Sticks his fingers as far down his throat as they’ll go, then leans over the side and hurls until his stomach’s empty and he’s coaxing up bile, picking clumps of fur and flesh from his teeth.

            The vomit’s a soupy pool of red. He ignores the jagged edges of little bones.

            His sweats and hoodie are folded up under the passenger seat and he shrugs them on now as fast as he can with his hands shaking.

            The shakes never last for more than a few minutes. A day or two after and the idea of solid food’s still questionable, though. Sometimes, he’ll spend the next few nights locked up in his apartment trying to coax anything he can down, sipping vegetable broth like it’s rubbing alcohol.

            Work’s not exactly in the cards when he’s like this, so he takes business calls from home. A skype meeting works almost as well as dropping in, so since he’s one of the best marketers, a few quirky hours don’t bother his boss at all.

            The biggest joke, though, is that he was miserable before all of this. Miserable in a rudimentary sense at least. Slightly unnerved at how his favorite slacks were bordering on  _too_  snug. The bathroom sink leaking despite three different plumbers draining his wallet. His sister calling and casually mentioning their parents’ divorce. Danielle’s constant hints- snippets of nursery rhymes, cut outs from maternity magazines. He noticed all of it, but he’s blazing his way up the ladder, there’s no time for road blocks like children, so he’d been adamant about ignoring her. Eventually, the hints stopped. Then Danielle’s things started to disappear from his apartment. Then one night, he was sitting down with a beer and turned to ask her if she’d seen his cell, but she wasn’t there and she hadn’t been for days and he couldn’t even be upset because he’d done it all perfectly, play by play, to ruin everything they’d had.

            Now his entire life is just fanfare for those choice nights and he’d give anything to go back to how it was before when he was as ignorant as the people he works with. He tossed words like agony around, too, but he’d give anything to suffer like that again. To have his biggest worry be forgetting Dani’s birthday, or calling in to check on his mother after his dad finally moved into a condo on the other side of the city. Now it’s all he can do to keep the train on the tracks,

—

The easiest way to tell genuine magic from glitter and top hats and rigged decks of cards is the smell.

            The minute you walk in, it should smell like someone’s remains are hidden in the walls. It shouldn’t be well kept. It shouldn’t be sterile. There should be no chance of you being swayed to eat anything of yours that should happen to drop on the floor at any point. As a matter of fact, you shouldn’t even have cleaning products. Because decay? It’s a stamp of approval that not many shops have nowadays. And Zayn’s been around for a very long time. Magic does that to you. Not immortality or anything, but there’s something about all of that dark energy that hardens your soul a bit, toughens it up. Zayn’s own mother, a batty old hag but an incredible witch, had lived to see one hundred and seventy.

            It’s why Zayn’s never cleaned a day in his life. He was never a model son, but he listened to that much. So now his shop is filthy. There’s dust caked onto things that haven’t moved in decades. It smells musky and the air’s thick with incense and mildew and he’s damn well going to keep it that way.

            Sweat. The occasional cigar. The energy his music leaves behind once the songs are done.

            But every now and then there’s always the perfumed, factory-plastic stench of brand new umbrellas and lamented subway route maps.  _Tourists._

            They’re flashy red signs. They don’t even need to speak, Zayn can spot them from a distance easy. Straw hats, sandals, their own states flags stitched onto their batchels. How they start to speak normally, but automatically slow it down once they register his face. He’ll usually let them go a few sentences before cutting in that his English is fine.

            It’s all irritating, but not much for him to mull over. Unless his competition’s concerned..  _Because if another tourist comes in with one of The Gypsy’s brochures_ , he thinks,  _I’m going to level the goddamn eastern seaboard._

            Preferably with fire, but a good tidal wave could do the trick a bit neater. It wouldn’t be hard- you don’t make it decades in arts like this without making a few powerful friends. He’s thought about this at length before.

            But there’s always the pesky dilemma of how he’d make a living if he killed everyone within a 1,000 mile radius of his sole source of income, so he just huffs it out and broods instead. And when the door opens and a gang of pudgy, tanned tourists files in, he grinds his jaw to stop himself from mentioning the tie dye freak show flyers they’ve all got shoved in their fists. He doesn’t even have to get a good look to see Niall’s face across the front of each one with his hair greased back, enough make up on to wax a car, and one of those god forsaken capes he thought made him look genuine. He’s pointing to the bottom corner where- in Chiller font, fucking asshole- it reads ‘Come if you seek the truth’.

             Yeah, maybe if the truth was a couple of mist machines and the theme to The Craft on repeat.

            Niall’s shop, The Gypsy, is a gimmick and a bad one at that. All flash, no substance. The darkest thing he had for sell was a vial of bat’s blood, and even that he hadn’t retrieved himself.

            “E-bay,” he’d admitted, once Zayn worked a quick truth charm. Zayn still hasn’t figured out who E-bay is, but it doesn’t change the fact that  _his_  is the only certified magic shop in New York City. Maybe the entire country.

            But now, despite all of his skill and knowledge, he’s standing by the ancient old register while the group insists that he do a magic trick.

            “The other guy swallowed two whole swords,” a kid says with a wet Carolina accent as if this nugget of information would somehow sway Zayn to attempt three.

            “I don’t sell tricks,” he tells them, “I don’t sell toys. I sell magic.” Not that he should have to explain it. His store is called “Magic Shop” after all. No fuss, no frills.

            “If you’re brave enough,” he adds when one woman starts to look like she might ask about the swords again.

            Eventually they leave with bags full of little knickknacks, and he breathes a sigh of relief, but the day ends up being the same clientele over and over. Loud, nasally tourists with deep pockets. It would be unbearable if he wasn’t able to convince a few to shell out for some pretty expensive finds. One man with his daughter winds up cleaning out Zayn’s stock of fresh-minted gold river pebbles. He warns the man a few times that they should never come in contact with a virgin or anyone wearing green, but he’s pretty sure it falls on deaf ears. He makes a note in his log to expect him back in a week or two angry and confused carrying his gilded daughter in his arms like a disgruntled Midas.

Like most evenings, he closes up around eleven and flips off the lights to burn some of his candles instead.

He has them lined up along the back wall and pooling at the corner of his massive oak work desk. His great-grandfather’s recipe book is in storage now, so he looks through his grandmother’s. His go-to is an easy whip for happy thoughts, but after the day he’s had, something stronger seems more fitting.

He turns to one of the very last pages and checks to make sure he remembers the ingredients for Amorzian correctly. It’s simple to make, but easy to screw up. When done correctly, though, it’s liquid Heaven. A glass or two and you’re guaranteed Nirvana for the next twelve hours.

He’s just mixing the charred willow roots into the brew when Louis half-walks, half-stumbles through the back door. His greeting’s a slur of profanity, knocking be damned. Not that Zayn needs to hear his voice to know it’s him. He can tell it’s Louis the same way he knows his store is authentic- the smell.

Louis reeks like he’s been sucking down cigarettes and whiskey usually. It’s nearly midnight now, so there’s a bit of coffee, too. Mostly, it’s the dried blood that Zayn finds so familiar. 

Cat’s blood he guesses right off the top of his head. Or maybe a bird. Something dark. He’s too exhausted to dig much deeper. When Louis gets close enough, he settles on raven’s blood, probably a few weeks old. He must have just rolled out of bed. He and Harry always fooled around with blood and it took hours for the smell to fade.

            “Love spell? You make enough for two?” Louis asks, practically sticking his nose in.

            Zayn nudges him away before he can breathe in it and ruin the next step.

            “I had a rough day,” he says, then realizes Louis came in alone, “Where’s your shadow?”

             Louis pulls a face and sighs, leans back against the edge of the desk.

“You know, I always thought having a protégé was like built in fame.”

“You’re saying it isn’t?”

“Last night, I spent it coaching him through a summoning spell.”

Zayn nods.

“And?” Summoning can be simple if it’s a kind spirit. But beyond that, it’s one of the most dangerous things a novice can attempt without their master there. Summoning any number of mystical beings, or someone who’s been dead for more than a century is just stupid. Summoning a demon is full on suicidal.

Louis’ grunt of annoyance is response enough.

“That’s the thing,” he says, “Harry knew it word for word already.”

Zayn stirs and takes a sip. Adds a spoon full of pink peppercorn.

“Well, it’s not like you can’t buy a spell book for a few bucks and figure it out.”

Louis makes a point to lean in and lower his voice.

“You remember how the summoning goes, don’t you?”

“I’m a little rusty, but sure.” He can count the ingredients off in his head, but the words are spotty. The ending’s clear enough at least. Translating from the Latin, it summed up to  _I welcome_  so-and-so blah blah  _from rest to Earth._

“ _Lucian_ ,” Louis whispers, “We were summoning up some old teacher of his and I said ‘Mary’. Do you know what he said, Zayn? Fucking _Lucian_.”

Zayn’s not sure how he’s supposed to take this, so he just lets Louis seethe. Pours them both a slim glass of the Amorzian.

After a few sips, and mock applause from Louis on the texture, Zayn asks what it’s supposed to mean. That Harry’s familiar with the spell and happens to have some man named Lucian on the tip of his tongue while he’s reciting it?

“I don’t know,” Louis tells him, “but I’m assuming it’s bad. When I asked the last time, I think he was going to self combust trying not to let anything slip.”

“Sounds like a pain in the ass.”

Louis just raises his eyebrows and downs his glass, pours a pretty healthy second.

“Why do you even keep him around?” Zayn asks, sipping at his.

Louis smirks, sits up a bit straighter. When he licks his lips, his tongue is stained raspberry pink. “Have you  _seen_  Harry?”

“Yeah,” Zayn says, “All of the awkward pudgy sixteen years of him. And how old are you now? Eighty? Ninety?”

Louis has enough pride at least to pretend to be hurt.

“And I don’t look a day over twenty-five, right? You’re not so peachy yourself, love. One hundred and eight if I remember correctly.”

Zayn gives Louis a pretty decent slap on the arm for that one, but he can’t say it isn’t true. Regardless, he stifles his drink supply right after. Louis begrudgingly leaves a half hour later, threatening to never come back but Zayn’s heard those words for as long as he can remember.

He leaves him with a little encouragement about Harry, but he’s not sure it does any good. Louis’ parting reply is that he’ll kill him if he did anything stupid. But with Harry, Zayn knew, it was only a matter of time.

—

Liam’s researching when he feels the first tendrils of the change. In the base of his spine, there’s the softest touch. How his mother used to hold Dani’s arm when they’d visit. “Give him some time,” she’d tell her, Liam knew, like he needed to be coaxed into it. Like he was some rabid animal with its teeth bared, defensive and cornered. It’s almost funny now, how wrong they’d all been. How right, too, maybe.

            The book he’s flipping through is so thick, he has to almost ease it closed. It’s not a spell book, just something he’d picked up in the teen section of the library. There were a few things he rolled his eyes at-  _Seriously? An entire chapter on the best foods to curb your blood lust?-_  but he was honestly surprised at what they’d gotten right. So much so that he’d been looking to see if maybe there was anything useful. Then the change starts.

            It’s too early, but there’s not really anything he can do. He steadies his breathing, tucks every stray thought away, hones in on the inhale-exhale, the thump-thump of his heart beating so much faster than it’s supposed to. But it’s different than any change he’s ever experienced. It slams into him ruthlessly, for one. And instead of the wolf shoving his human form aside, it’s like they’re merging somehow.

            Father. The word drops into his mind, threads through him, pierces the discomfort and he’s struggling to stay upright, but it’s different than before. He’s smiling, for one. He can’t even help it, he’s just grinning, laughing. His knees are barely holding him up, but there are butterflies in his stomach.

            The word drops in again, stronger this time. Father. He doesn’t even know where it’s coming from. But the next time it happens, he gasps it out past his lips and it’s not English. It’s something rougher, almost like a growl.

            Father Father. He’s changing. Fast. Too fast. His skin’s tearing, his veins bursting. His bones snap and he moans when his body sags to the floor. There’s nothing gradual about it. Everything’s shifting at once and he doesn’t have time to be terrified because of it. There’s only the pain, the hostile stench of blood, and that word again.

—

Niall’s changing out the slide on his tropical sunrise air freshener when the package arrives.

            The delivery boy is a good foot shorter than him, with a dozen pimples all clustered at the tip of his nose, and a thin film of sweat on his skin despite it being somewhere around 60 degrees outside. Even with absurdly large glasses, he has to squint to read Niall’s name on the line.

            “Can you sign here, Mr.-  _Horan the, uh Horrible_?”

            “Ah, yes, finally. My new cape’s made it.”

            He signs with a bit of a flourish. Not that anyone could blame him. He’d been working on the name for months. He took a lot of pride in finding the perfect size  _x_  to dot his _i_  with. 

            “How about another signature for you? What’s your name, kid?” he asks once he’d done. The boy’s face twists up into something almost like a grimace, but Niall’s been deftly trained in the art of reading people’s true intentions.

            “Here,” he offers, dragging the pen across the lower half of the form and tearing it off.

             _Stay true to yourself, Benny, and the magic will find you._

                         _-Horan the Horrible_

He claps him on the back and ushers him out, folding the torn page into his hand. “Hold on to that, yeah? ‘S gonna be worth a lot of money in a few years. Lotta’ money. Lotta’ dough.”

            It’s almost an hour before he can settle down enough to open the package. Customers saunter in and demand his attention. A few his expertise on lore. One woman starts to cry and he waits patiently for her to ask him to speak with her husband on the other side. He usually charges a small fee for it, but she’s wearing a brand new watch and her loafers might as well still have the thousand dollar tag tacked on. He bumps the price up and tells her to come by first thing tomorrow morning.

            Eventually, he’s roped into swallowing a sword, and people gather around to watch. He fake gags a few times for dramatic effect- they always buy more for the little things.

            Once they’re gone, he closes shop temporarily, switching off the neon Open sign, and carries the cardboard box into his office where he opens it gently with scissors.

            There’s a small envelope inside. Immaculate, like always, with lavender ribbons laced around the edges. “Thanks for choosing us blah blah blah Your cape is made with only the finest velvet yada yada.” He’s ordered enough capes that he knows the card by heart.  He tosses it in the trash and unwraps the paper, lifting the fabric gingerly from the box.

            And dear god, it’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen. Just the lining. The lining makes him want to cry. The darkest zebra hide, folding into the lion’s mane hood. He takes a moment to thank the mother that he was blessed with the best complexion that he could get away with wearing color combinations like this. There were so many poor schlubs walking around with olive, pepper lined capes, looking absolutely ridiculous. Black, moss green lined. White, blood red. Once his friend, Josh, had shown up for a party in an ash, canary yellow lined one and Niall hadn’t spoken to him for months.

            He lays the cape across his desk now and pats at the lining until he finds the tiny concealed pockets he’d paid the extra fee for. There’s another long one in the right sleeve for his quills, but he pauses before he can get to it, peering down queerly at the fabric in the light of his lamp.

            Something’s off.

             He can’t even pinpoint it, but the lining’s fine, perfect really. There’s just something strange about the outside pelt. He’d asked for the standard two-panel purple velvet cape and here it is, but he’s squinting at it in the light, something nagging at him.

            He lays it out a bit better, more evenly across his desk, and goes to turn on the brighter light. Then he gasps and takes a step back.

            “Oh no.”

            The pain in his chest is his heart breaking. It has to be. He walks over to touch the fabric again, half hoping that he’s wrong. That it’s just the wonky light in his office. But he’s right. He knows before he even reads the tag stitched into the lower panel.

            Eggplant.

            It’s certainly someone’s idea of a joke. They couldn’t make a mistake this big, it’s obscene.

            But he reads it again and again and even brings it back to his shop to see it in natural light, but there the color seems even more vividly absurd. He can’t wear  _eggplant._  It’ll wash him out. It’ll ruin him.

            He’s on the phone with the company fully submerged in profanity and threats-  _“Send me the spiced wine cape that I paid for, or you’ll be speaking with my lawyer, damn it”-_ when Harry comes trudging through the door, looking as long and sleep deprived as usual.

            Niall waves him over and finishes up his call, agreeing on another three weeks for shipment of the cape he’d asked for and full compensation for the mishap.

            “You’ve got to learn how to handle people,” he says, “You’ve got to demand the respect.”

            Yapping at Harry’s boots is a fur ball that’s somehow managed to acquire a collar and leash.

            Niall checks his watch and waits a few beats for Harry’s tiny master to show up. When he doesn’t come sashaying through the door after him, Niall studies him curiously.

            “Does daddy know you’re out after midnight?”

            Harry blushes and fiddles with the leash. Takes a little sidestep away from the mutt beside him.

             “Louis’ with Zayn. He won’t be home for hours. We’ve got time.”

“So secret mission, huh?” he says.

“I just- It’s better if he doesn’t know. I already messed up so bad. He’ll kill me if he finds out we screwed up.”

“We?” Niall asks, “I did your spell perfectly last time. One beefy werewolf to-go.”

Harry looks about ready to faint.

“But I didn’t know he’d be so angry. I mean, I was bringing him up from Hell. He didn’t even thank me, he just tried to eat my face.”

“Hence the shrinking,” Niall says. And he’d been pretty damn proud of that bit, too. Thinking quick on his feet, he’d thrown the spell out before Lucian could dismember Louis’ Lolita, shrinking the behemoth down to something more manageable. More like a guinea pig than the father of all werewolves.

“Yeah, uh thanks. For that,” Harry says, “I don’t think I ever thanked you before.”

“Don’t mention it. Anything for a friend.”

With that, Niall switches on the Closed sign and locks up shop.

They head down to his office and flip an empty crate over to drop on the pooch. His yapping gets exceedingly more irritating, but him being restrained gives them a few minutes to push all of the furniture to the walls. With a decent-sized circle in the middle of the floor, Niall flips through the spell and checks the ingredients while Harry draws a massive star in a circle with chalk in the hardwood.

Between the two of them, they manage the beginning of the spell without a hiccup. It’s just the binding bit to make sure the little critter doesn’t go scurrying off before they can finish. He’d had to dig a bit deeper to find it, and pay an old guy on West and 22nd to keep his mouth shut, but with the addition of newborn blood the spell had the plus side of essentially neutering the mutt for a few minutes so if he decided to bite either of them, they wouldn’t be turning wolf anytime soon. When they’re all done, Niall asks Harry to uncover the dog. Harry looks like he might be sick, but he holds him out at arms’ length and stands in the middle of the star with him.

The final part of the spell is a lot trickier. It’s why Niall had insisted on doing it alone, just in case anything happened to go wrong. Not that he had any doubts about his capabilities. But there were always setbacks and he didn’t want Louis on his ass if Harry somehow died in a freak accident in his shop.

He asks Harry again, just to be sure, while he’s burning the dried willow.

“And it’s just the one guy, right? The one changeling?”

Harry nods, digging into his bottom lip. Lucian’s squirming in his grip, trying to rear back and bite his hands.

“Just one. He hasn’t bitten anyone else.”

“You’re sure?”

“Positive. Just the suit. His name’s Liam.”

Once the willow’s burned, Niall starts on the dogwood.

“And you checked his moon cycle, right?”

People always thought werewolf cycles ran purely on full moons and nothing else. Mostly, these people strayed to YA fiction and goth make up, but they were wrong. There was almost a science to it.

For decades, people had been trying to map it all out. They’d eventually figured out the most important factors, though how they fit together was harder to interpret. The age of the changeling was important. How strong the wolf was who bit them. Their proximity and relationship. Emotional instability. Physical and mental health. So it’s not a ridiculous question, to ask about the moon cycle, but Niall doesn’t have to see Harry to know he’s rolling his eyes.

“I checked, okay? I’m not a complete idiot. His full moon’s not for two weeks. I snooped before I came here. He’s just at home reading Twilight or something. Not close to shifting at all.”

“You’d better not be wrong.”

“I’m not,” Harry counters, “Plus, what’s the worst that could happen? Even if he does shift, Lucian will be gone, so it should reverse the change.”

Niall just shrugs.

“In theory. None of the literature actually supports it. Better safe than sorry, you know? Better to be sure he’s human when we send his papa back to the underworld.”

With that, he finishes up the smoking, and starts on the incantation.

The minute the words leave his lips, Lucian starts to shriek and struggle even harder.

Niall almost stops to make sure Harry’s okay holding him, but keeps going instead. It should only take a minute or two anyway, and if they stop, they’ll have to start the entire process over again. He doesn’t have time for that. Becca’s party starts at one a.m., and now he has to plan his entire outfit around a different cape.

The next few lines are a bit more difficult to pronounce so he takes his time. It’s working. Slowly, but working. Lucian’s fur is losing color, his form melting, almost, down to the ground. His growls just sound like sighs now. And when the spell’s all done, his mortal body’s nothing more than a pile of fuzz at Harry’s feet, his soul nice and snug back in Hell.

From the other side, Niall’s still a bit connected. He can hear Lucian growling on and on about something or other, so he strains to listen for the few seconds the like lasts. Once it’s officially sealed off, he sighs. “Son. Of course it’s your son.”

Before he can even start thinking about cleaning up his office, he grabs his pea coat from the rack and drags Harry to the front door by his arm.

“Where’s this Liam guy live? Is it far?”

Harry shakes his head, his hair falling into his eyes.

“No, it’s just a few blocks. Uh, why?”

“We’re going to check on him.”

He shuts out the main lights and pulls the drapes closed. It’s not until they’re outside and Harry’s shivering in his flimsy school blazer and Niall’s practically jogging that he tells Harry he told the demon he’d check on Lucian’s son.

Harry’s practically panting to keep up despite his long legs.

“But the spell went fine,” he says, “Liam’s probably fine, too.”

He leads them down the next block and they make a left, Niall tells him the demon was pretty insistent. Said Lucian wouldn’t shut up about his “son” this, and “son” that. Doesn’t hurt to check, right? The sooner they get this over with, the sooner he can start getting ready anyway. There had been vampires promised and he refused to miss it.

The minute they get to Liam’s building, though, he knows something’s wrong.

He can feel it soaking through the stone. Shafted magic, nibbled on and spat out. He tells Harry to call Louis, tell him to meet them there.

“What? Why?” he asks, eyes wide.

Niall’s walking away now, “You’re going to need his help. Trust me.”

“You’re just going to _leave_?” His voice cracks on the end. Sixteen years of stupid.

“You didn’t pay me enough to deal with the shit storm that’s coming, kid. Good luck. I’ve got a party to get to.”

—

Zayn spends most half moons in his shop researching.          

Not many people know this, but there’s static in all of the air around us. Or static’s not really the right word. It’s more like all of the energy, all of the electricity that runs through power lines? Okay, that has as much juice as the “static” that’s coursing through the air we breathe. It’s like the universe’s own natural energy shot. On normal days, it gets soaked up quick with emotions. Happiness takes it the fastest, but sadness does, too. Anger thickens it up and it gets tacked onto our skin and stays for hours or days or months sometimes. On half moons, though, there’s so much static if you know where to look, it coagulates like old oil, thick enough you can sop it up and take it back to your magic shop to mix with a few pinches of ash and a glass of red wine.

Zayn sips while he reads, brushing up on his Norse mythology.

He’s two glasses in when he hears the faintest knock at his front door. He doesn’t even get up to answer it. Just shouts out, “Read the damn sign. It’s closed.”

A few more thumps follow, then a deep moan, and he’s on his feet- prepared to curse out a group of weed-empowered kids, when he hears the clamber of keys and a second later the door swings open.

            “Louis?” he squints.

            It is Louis, though. His hair’s matted down with blood and he’s wearing nothing but a poorly tied bath robe, but Zayn could spot him if he was blind. It’s him and Harry both who struggle through his door, grunting trying to keep up the limp man-shaped massacre hanging between their shoulders.

            His first thought is that they’ve murdered someone and now they’re all going to prison.

            “Louis?” his voice hasn’t quite reached angry yet, but it’s getting close, “Louis, what did you do?”

Zayn’s head is grunting that it’s a dead body, that he’s too damn old to be digging graves again, but he listens to the quieter voice instead. Listens for the soft hum of energy in the man’s chest while he’s leading them through the shop to the back where he lives. There’s not much room, so Louis and Harry just drop the man onto Zayn’s bed. He’s so tall, his feet stick out a little over the edge. And he’s naked.

Well, give or take the beanie that someone has dropped across his lap, doing a poor job of covering his groin. Beyond that, though, he could be a corpse. He’s more than mutilated. It’s almost like someone’s shoved him into a wood chipper. His entire body is covered in gashes and bruises and lumps. Most of the cuts just look like flesh wounds, but there are other more troubling ones. Near his neck, straight down the middle of his abs, pussing tears across both thighs. Cut after cut carved out so deep there are glimpses of muscle and glimpses of bone and all Zayn can keep thinking is that he should be dead. No one can take a beating like this and still have their heart beating.

Zayn listens deeper, as deep as he can, but even the guy’s energy is a steady throb of just  _pulsing,_   _pulsing_  like his body hasn’t been torn to shreds. Like he hasn’t lost enough blood to fill a bath tub. Still pumping, though. There’s blood everywhere. So much, his skin looks like rusted copper, soaking Zayn’s mossy green sheets dark as coal.

The only explanation Zayn can think of is that Louis’ working a spell to keep him alive. A pretty fucking powerful one to be sure. But when Zayn finally turns to him, Louis’ so preoccupied trying to stop Harry from sobbing, Zayn can’t imagine him focusing on the chant, too.

“Is someone going to tell me what the hell is going on?”

“I summoned Lucian,” Harry mutters. Louis looks like he wants to rip out a few of his ribs, but he’s keeping a calm head.  _For_  Harry maybe.  He hushes him and starts to leave the room, motioning for Zayn to follow.

            He has a second or two of uncertainty about leaving Harry alone with some strange clotheless man. Then he remembers the guy’s got as much life as ground turkey and he follows Louis out into the front of the shop.

            “Talk,” he says. Orders really. It’s easier now that he’s away from all of the blood. Here, it’s sort of his natural element. Teacher-student again, like old times.

            “It’s just like Harry said. He summoned Lucian.” Louis sighs.

            Zayn drags his hands over his face, tries to think clearly.

            “That’s not him, is it?” he asks eventually. He’d never seen Lucian himself, but he’d seen enough depictions of him in old hunter journals and histories to know that he should have been a good two feet taller and thick enough to make Lou Ferrigno look like Gollum.

            Louis shakes his head.

            “No, this guy’s just one of his moon kids. Just.. keep him here until I figure it all out.”

            Zayn laughs. “You’re joking, right? I have a store to run. I can’t babysit.”

            “Well, I can’t take him back to mine. The tenant’s a nazi. She can smell a lit cigarette from four floors down. Can you imagine what would happen if I brought home a dead guy.”

            He wants to remind him that he carts home a sixteen year old every night, but instead he bites it down and reminds him that the guy’s still vertical. For now, at least. “He’s not dead.”   

            “A  _half_ -dead guy then,” Louis sighs, “Who the hell cares? He’s still going to die whenever he stops shifting.”

            It makes perfect sense then. Zayn lets out a shaky breath.

            “It’s the change, then?”

            “What do you mean?”

            “What’s keeping him alive,” Zayn says, “I don’t know, I thought you were working a spell.”

            The groaning in the next room fades out a bit, but then comes back even stronger.

            “Not me. I couldn’t swing magic like that for this long,” Louis says, “Though I’m flattered you were thinking it. It’s the shifting really. His body’s stronger now than it should be so it’s not registering everything that’s happening to it.”

            “But when he stops shifting?”

            Louis sighs.

            “He’ll die. There’s no way around it.”

            Between the two of them, they’re pretty well versed in lore and magic. There are spells and potions to dispel werewolf venom and there are spells and potions to ease the strain on the body when shifting. The ingredients aren’t impossible to get to, but they’re expensive. The most important factor, though, isn’t the ingredients, it’s the venom itself.

            Most people didn’t even bother with the spell because of how poignant the venom is. Just ingesting a drop will change you. During the spell, it’s worse, though. It heightens its potency to make dispelling it easier. While it’s happening, it doesn’t even have to get into your blood stream. Just a touch would be enough. So leeching someone who’s just been bitten a few minutes before was the best bet if done safely. But after just a few hours, the venom is running through their entire body and draining them is difficult and dangerous. More dangerous than it’s worth, was the general idea.

            An idea that Zayn can tell, just by looking at his face, Louis firmly agrees with.

            “He’s your kid’s mistake,” Zayn reminds him, “You can’t just let him die. Where’s Lucian now anyway?” He starts to reach for the case where he keeps his silver bullets. Wouldn’t kill him, but would definitely slow him down.

            Louis quickly reassures him Harry said he had that taken care of.

            Zayn huffs, “Yeah, because he’s been so trustworthy so far.”

            “He had the help of a powerful witch,” Louis adds. But there’s something his tone that makes Zayn stares at him.

            “Like who?”

            Louis doesn’t even have to say it. He just blinks and licks his lips and Zayn groans.

            “You’re fucking kidding me.  _Niall?_  He went to that asshole for help instead of me. For all we know, he’s the reason it went to shit.”

            When Louis makes a deadpan remark about their ‘history’, Zayn almost takes his head off. Hushes him so quick, he nearly stumbles over his words.

            “Bigger things to deal with here, don’t you think?” he snaps.

            They sit in silence for a moment, just trying to clear their heads, work a few things out.

            A few minutes later while Louis’ comforting a distressed Harry out in the shop, Zayn makes a quick pain remedy.

            It’s not the best he can do on short notice, but it’ll be better than nothing. At least numb the worst of the guy’s injuries. He stirs it into a half a glass of white wine and gets him up enough to drink it. A few seconds later, he’s out cold.

            With nothing else to do but wait, Zayn decides to be nosy instead.

            Normally, you might check a wallet for ID. But the man- Liam- didn’t have anything personal on him anyway. And Zayn had a gift that was a hell of a lot stronger than digging through credit cards and licenses.  

            He can read his aura already.

            It’s muddled from the syrup he’d given him for the pain. And he’s a werewolf, despite the chaos, so he’s harder to read than normal people, but Zayn’s stronger than most.  He pulls a chair up to the side of the bed, touches Liam’s arm gently just with the tip of his fingers for an anchor while he dips into his heart.

            His aura’s cloudy at first, but past that initial layer, it’s brighter than Zayn would have expected for someone so young.

            Twenty-six is his first guess, but he gets a glimpse of a bottle of wine and a girl smiling down at him, pressing a card into his hand with Happy 25th written on it. There are numbers flooding through every bit of him. Decimals and fractions and spread sheets. So he works wallstreet, Zayn decides. Liam in a pressed suit and tie, carrying a briefcase in an empty elevator, practicing a speech to his boss under his breath.  _“I’m an invaluable asset to the team, sir. Since I’ve been here, our sales have seen a steady in-”_

The images slow almost to a pause when he gets to the bite. Liam brushes it off. It’s just a dog after all. There’s doubt and regret sharpening the memory and Zayn relaxes and lets them. But then Liam’s aura is sticky and thick when he’s retching into the kitchen sink a few days later. The phone rings and he tells her he can’t make it tonight. Tries to explain that his entire body’s on fire and he’s going to go to the emergency room. The woman on the other line just laughs at him, sounds like she’s completely given up. “God, Liam, I swear. Your excuses..You’re fucking shameless, you know that?” Her voice carries into all of the other memories. She’s always there in the background. When he shifts, Zayn can feel it in his bones, too. Not the agony, but the warmth and the strength afterward. The animal’s aura is still Liam’s. Still too bright for him, but it fits better here unrestrained. In the suit, tapping away at his blackberry, it’s almost sad watching it all slowly go to waste.

            He feels resentment pooling in his gut. At Harry, but Harry’s only a kid. Kids make mistakes. Zayn himself had certainly done some insane things to try and impress his own master when he was learning. No, Harry wasn’t to blame. Louis was honestly, for not keeping an eye on him and not making the risks explicit enough.

“You don’t deserve this,” Zayn whispers, watching the shredded skin on Liam’s chest stained burgundy, remembering his girlfriend Danielle’s baby book open to cherry wood cribs, “You’re just a kid.”

He says it to himself really. But Liam’s eyes blink open, and he groans. It’s ten times better sounding than the miserable grunting he was doing before, so Zayn takes it as a good sign his potion is working the way it should.

Liam’s eyes can’t seem to adjust to the light. It’s not even bright, but everything’s shadowy.  _Where am I?_ Tip of his tongue. But across from him he can see rows of thick books and he’d been carried from his apartment by an angry couple arguing in hushed voices. They said they would help. They apologized profusely. He’d passed out three times from the pain. Once when the younger boy had started to stagger under Liam’s weight and took it knee to pavement with Liam still clinging to his shoulder.

The boy across from him now is new though. Worn in clothing, layers and layers of dark grays and greens. His nails are painted and his hair’s slicked back. Maybe this is his place, he thinks. A book store, most likely. An old one. His body’s on fire. He tries to push it away. Lock it down like he’d learned in grief therapy when he was younger. Find a place for it deep in your mind. Lock it away there. Cover it up.

_What had he been saying? You’re a kid?_  Liam huffs at that. But it tugs on his throat and he’s gurgling up a bit of blood.

“’m older than- older than you,” he gasps, squeezing his eyes shut like it’ll make it all hurt less. Not being able to see. Like the darkness won’t just coat his eyes, but his entire body.

Zayn wipes his mouth with his sleeve.

“You’d be surprised.”

Liam tries to laugh. It’s like a chainsaw revving to life in his chest.

“Try me.”

Frame.

He wants to say it, and it’s on the tip of his tongue, but nothing comes out. Zayn’s fingers are on his arm and he leans back a little.

“Frame, huh? Let me think. Uh, okay. I’m old. I remember the Statue of Liberty.”

Liam’s pretty sure his eyes bulge right out of his skull. Zayn quickly hushes him, almost reaches for the potion again.

“No, oh no, not initially. But I remember when it was restored the first time. I was thirty-two.”

Liam tries to run that through in his mind, but it still seems absurd. Ignoring the claim, ignoring the years. Just the idea of this tiny little guy being even a day over twenty was insane. But then he’d been bored on enough subways to read random touristy facts to pause and study Zayn’s face to make sure he wasn’t mental. 1938 is on a loop in his mind. Liberty had been restored in 38’, he’s pretty sure. And Zayn’s claiming to have been thirty-two then. Meaning he’d have to be over a hundred now. 

“That’s not- not-” He swallows, but the word won’t make it out. Possible, he’s trying to say.

Zayn just smiles.

Or Liam’s starting to realize he doesn’t seem to truly smile. It’s more like half of his mouth quirks up a bit and he just kind of stops there. Unnervingly, it makes him look a bit like a stroke victim. But an attractive stroke victim. If it matters anyway.

“A year ago you would have said werewolves weren’t possible. Maybe for now, you should keep a more open mind.”

Liam’s too weak to say much after that, barely able to keep his eyes open.

Zayn usually prefers quiet, but there’s something too eerie about the silence with Liam’s lids drooping and the stench of rotted meat. He rambles sort of. About who Harry is and who Louis is and what they mean to each other and how sorry they are for everything and how they’re going to try to fix it. He tells Liam about his shop and about Niall’s and when Liam makes a grating noise at his description of the shop flyer, Zayn can’t help but laugh.

“I know, right? Fucking tool.”

Liam’s falling asleep when Zayn starts to apologize. None of the things are his fault, but he apologizes for Harry and for Louis and for Danielle leaving him, for his parent’s divorce, for not getting there sooner to catch him before he’d started shifting, for not knowing the right things to say now.

When Liam wakes up, Louis and Harry are both standing at the foot of the bed. Zayn’s still in the chair by his side and Liam’s reflex is to sigh, but he chokes it out and Zayn immediately reaches for the glass on the nightstand. He holds it to his lips and Liam tries to drink. A few sips make it down eventually.

While it works through him, easing the pain, the three of them discuss what’s to be done with him.

“We can’t just leave him,” Harry says, and Louis rolls his eyes.

“You’re too nice, you know that?”

Zayn’s voice is smoother than the other two. At first, Liam thinks he’s singing. Or maybe he’s just more out of it than he’d thought.

“No, Harry’s right,” Zayn says, sings, “He could die before we even get the ingredients for the spell.”

There are nods all around.

“Someone should stay with him,” Zayn adds, “to make sure he’s okay. Louis and I can dig faster. Harry can watch-”

“No, don’t- Just-” Liam tries, but he loses the words again.

They’re all strangers. They’ve helped so far, but it was their fault he was like this anyway. Some weird witch drama had ruined his life. And he hates them. The whole lot of them. Harry with his stupid werewolf dog and Louis who talked about him like he wasn’t right there and Zayn. He hates Zayn, too, but he doesn’t want him to leave. Of all of them, Zayn’s the only one who didn’t have a part.

But the words won’t leave his throat. Don’t. Go. Please. They form together in his head, but he can’t say them

Zayn seems to understand, though. He reaches for Liam’s hand and he can’t bend his fingers. They’re rigid and even from Zayn’s cool skin, it feels like he’s being flayed, like he’s being set on fire.

“I’ll stay,” Zayn tells him. He says it again over his shoulder.

Louis looks down at him, his hand on Harry’s hip.

“You sure? You can chill out. It’s not like he’s going anywhere.”

Liam hates him. He hates him so much.

Zayn just shakes his head.

“Go on, I’ll stay,” he says, “but hurry up, alright? We can guess about this all night, but none of us really knows when he’ll stop shifting. He could bleed out any minute.”

            And just like that they’re gone. Liam tries to swallow but it hurts too much, so he lets it dribble out a bit and Zayn wipes it with his sleeve.

             _How long will they be gone?_  The words he can’t even fathom making his mouth say.

            Zayn touches his arm again. Reads him, or something.

            “A few hours,” he says, “at the least. There are a few ingredients that are a bit.. harder to get.”

            ‘Least’ is the last word Liam hears before he drifts off. Not sinking into it, but plummeting on down like once when he’d gone to a kook and bought a dozen capsules of ‘shift repellant’.

It had worked for a bit at least. He’d gone through a moon unscathed. Until he missed a pill one moon and his entire change took less than a minute. He’d been in the worst pain of his life. Worse than now, he thinks. Pushing the thought away. No pain, he tells himself. After that shift he’d woken up in someone’s field the next state over. Sometimes he pretends that he wasn’t surrounded by carcasses. Most of the time he can convince himself one that seemed human wasn’t corralled into the mix.

            With that thought ricocheting around in his skull, he slips deeper to where he doesn’t even dream. Just the panting warm rush of being on the trail of game. His paws slick on the ground, teeth bared and ready to rip something apart. Sometimes he’s not sure who the wolf wants to destroy more. Sometimes he’s almost ready to let it win.


	2. Chapter 2

There’s a part of Liam that knows this is a dream.

A disturbingly small part, though. Something so easily dismissed, he has to scramble to find it again once he’s settled into the frozen over train tracks. The twin rails snaking beside him on and on for miles like copper by the light of the wide moon.

He’s lying out with his paws bleeding, shreds missing from his flank and side. Two claws hanging on by gristle. _You’re dreaming_ , he reminds himself. And for nearly a second, the iron feels like sheets cracking with dried blood. Then he hears a distant howl and raises his snout, scents for the musky stench of the pack. He’d been so far ahead of them, the fastest even injured, but outrunning them could only last for so long. Eventually, he’d had to stop, panting with exhaustion. And fear, though he’d never admit it. Even to himself, he pretends how jumpy he feels is because of the cold. January upstate is like the arctic, right? The next howl is followed by a string of four more closer than he’d anticipated.

As soon as he starts to run, he hears her voice.

“Liam?”

 _This then_ , he stops so fast he nearly topples over, the pain in his body ricocheting through every muscle, _this must be a dream_.

            But he doesn’t match piece to the now. There’s only her voice, whispering over the chill. His name again and again and she doesn’t say anything else, but he stands still and listens.

            “Liam?”

            A little deeper. Wolves don’t blush. But he feels a strange heat settling into his ribs listening to her voice dip when she rasps his name a million miles away. She was always so controlled. When he got her to let go, it was one of the most incredible things, to watch her rip herself apart for him.

            “Dani?” he tries to say. It comes out more of a snarl than a word.

            When she says his name again, it’s not her voice. It is.. But it’s someone else too. It makes sense to him, that they’d be different but the same. Or, at least makes sense in the dream now in the way that dreams seem to exist on their own terms until the moment just before you wake up and it all starts to slip right away.

            The voice is familiar, though. Something adjacent to the dream. Something _human_ , his mind supplants but he hushes it. A list of names roll through his memory and he tosses them all aside. None feel right. His uncle John? His grandfather? Danielle never sounded so calm. Never so determined to have him listen. That pain in his chest bottoms out to a single pulse just above his heart. Dad?

            Oh wait, no, there’s the word. Zayn. A sigh in the darkness, the pressure on his lids eases into lamp light. Four worried faces trained on him, leaning in like they’re examining a particularly rare specimen.

            It’s harder to push that last thought away than he’d like.

            “Hey, buddy,” one says. Still, their faces aren’t much more than creamy smudges. But the one speaking isn’t Zayn, Liam knows. Zayn’s face is the closest. And even with his vision foggy, there’s something cloyingly distinctive about Zayn’s dark hair and the murky shadows beneath his eyes. His hand is wrapped up in Liam’s still. He has a moment to remember that the grip should hurt, that he’s in agonizing pain right now, before the unfamiliar voice pipes in again.

            “Hey, uh, you’re awake, right? We need to talk to you.”

            It’s grating.

            Liam tries to nod, but he’s too weak. Even opening his mouth feels monumental. He swallows, one weak dry little swallow, and it’s so taxing on his energy that he’s drifting down again. The last thing he hears is someone’s chipper little crack about wolves being nocturnal.

\--

            Zayn can’t remember the last time he stayed up all night with another person at his place.

            A small voice in the back of his mind cheerfully reminds him that it was two years ago and he’d been cleaning Louis’ come out of his desk lining for weeks after.

            Whatever.

            This is different, regardless. Liam’s lying out on his bed like a raw Porterhouse, bleeding from everywhere anyone could possible bleed from and then a few more creative places. He keeps doing this whistly-sigh sound from deep in his throat. His nostrils will flare a bit and he’ll make the noise. His chest tightens and raises and Zayn’s heart had all but stopped the first time he’d done it, half convinced Liam was going to die right there. But then he’d done it a few minutes later. And then again.

            By now Louis and Harry have been gone for hours and Liam’s dead weight- except for the whistly noise.

            Waiting starts to be so awful, Zayn turns out the lights and sets out candles instead. It always helped to ease his mind. He has all of the time in the world now, it seems. He lights dozens.

            There’s not much order to it, but he gets as many as he can near his side of the bed so he can read by them. Wondering for a moment if it’s rude to prop your book up on a half-dead guy’s shoulder. When he remembers that said man is bleeding out into his favorite sheets, he decides he couldn’t care less.

            He makes it through about two chapters before he hears the door to his shop swinging open.

            There’s the quick drag of footsteps leading back to where he and Liam are holed up.

            Louis enters carrying a paper bag in one arm, Harry’s jacket in the other. He plops his load rather dispassionately on the bed between Liam’s bare feet.

            It’s not exactly comforting that Liam doesn’t seem to notice. If anything, Zayn’s hyper aware that he’s slipping deeper into whatever hazy painless alternate universe he’s dreamed up. No doubt one that is magic-free.

            All the while, Louis’ emptying the bag. 

            “Alright, to dispel the werewolf venom still in him keeping him from meeting his maker,” he says, lifting out a plastic jar about the size of his fist, “And to help his body ease into being human again.” The next bits he places on the end of the bed between Liam’s feet are little chunks of dark wood, hardly bigger than a fingernail, a dried herb that looks almost like a sage-parsley hybrid.  

            “So what?” Harry says, all but bouncing off the walls, “We dose him with what’s in the jar and spread this green stuff on the cuts?”

            “No, this first,” Louis says. The last item he pulls from the bag is a tiny vial barely the size of a thumb nail with a tiny brown dot marked onto it.

            “Is that from when you made me wait outside?” Harry asks.

            Zayn has to dodge a pretty deft slap from Louis after he whispers, “Good babysitter” under his breath.

 

            “Yeah, It’s sort of like concentrated super human serum.”

            “To make him human again?” Harry asks, “There’s barely anything in it. It’s not even a sip.”

            Louis bristles right up at that.

            “No, to confuse his body into _thinking_ it’s human again. And I paid about enough to buy a new car for it, so you’re welcome. And it’s concentrated, okay? It’s not freaking grape juice.”

            “Still..”

“Do you know how much of this stuff you need to make real changes? A half galloon dose and a vampire can be in the sun for about _ten minutes_. Or when a shifter wants a little reprieve from the full moon, he basically has to stick an IV in and drip sip it for weeks before. I think it’s safe to assume for your corpse friend that this little bit should do it.”

“We just want him human-ish enough so we can fix his bones a bit- that’s all,” Zayn quickly interjects when Harry looks worryingly on the verge of tears, “His body’s too strong now with the werewolf venom for us to do anything that’ll last. When his wounds are healed, we’ll try and work on getting the venom out of his system.”

            Harry croaks out something between a cough and hiccup.

            Louis shakes his head, points to the little plastic jar.

            “So this stuff we get him to drink- somehow. It’ll suck the venom out. The oak wood chips we stuff into his wounds to sort of old school hypothetically cleanse the stuff seeping out of him. And voila. No more werewolf venom.”

            The plan is lot easier said than done.

            Dose of the super human serum is simple enough. The minute it touches his lips, Liam starts groaning.

            Louis starts on his shoulder immediately, muttering the words for a simple healing spell. Zayn starts at Liam’s feet. Harry’s not strong enough to do much healing yet, so he fiddles with his sleeve and offers little moany sounds and covers his eyes whenever one of Liam’s bones starts to stitch itself back together.

            The bigger wounds don’t close up, but some of the smaller ones do.

            Then Louis pours what’s in the little plastic jar into Liam’s mouth and almost immediately his body starts _pussing._

            Harry jerks back, and Zayn has to fight the urge to do the same.

            From the wounds that are still open, and basically what looks like any other available bodily crevice, comes this oozing emerald colored sap.

        Louis has to nearly snap at them to get them back on track.

 

      Soon enough they’re pressing the little wooden chips into the cuts. “To purify the venom”, Louis explains to Harry, mainly just to talk so he can stop looking so close to being sick Zayn guesses. “It’s so it won’t change us if we touch it. Off chance, but better safe than sorry. It’s like a, uh neutralizer, or whatever.”

“And it’s getting all over the floor,” Zayn sighs, “Blood. Fucking green _goo_. I’m going to be scrubbing for weeks.”

            “Sorry,” Harry mutters. He’s been wedging the same wood chip into Liam’s calf ever since they started.

            At that rate, it takes them longer than probably normal to finish up. But eventually they’re rubbing the sagey herb stuff into the empty cuts and sitting back to admire their handiwork.

            And waiting.

            And still waiting.

            Eventually, Louis nudges Liam pretty smartly in the ribs. When he doesn’t bat an eye, Louis clears his throat.

            “He’s supposed to be waking up and thanking us profusely for saving his life right about now, right?”

            “Yeah, basically,” Zayn says.

            Then they’re all crowding around, staring Liam down like he’s a piece of artwork, judging for cracks. Somewhere they made a mistake.

            It takes             Zayn digging into his aura for a moment to pull back and sigh, shrugging.

            “He’s out,” he says, “Sort of a, uh, coma? Essentially.”

            Then five minutes later, When Zayn’s up in his shop strictly just to be away from the lovebirds comforting each other incessantly, his doorbell rings.

And when he answers it, it’s the one person on the planet he’d rather decapitate than talk to.

            And Niall, despite the smug smile on his face from catching Zayn unaware, at least seems relatively disheveled. That at least makes him feel a bit better.

            “No,” Zayn says instantly. On principle.

            Niall’s brows screw up. “Well, I didn’t even say anything yet, but okay, Nice to see you, too. Uhm, is Harry here? I got a pretty antsy text about the world coming to an end.”

            And just over Zayn’s shoulder comes the shrill sound of Louis existing.

            “Fucking finally,” Louis breathes, “I hope you know how to fix this.”

            Harry’s minimalist sigh immediately after makes Zayn want to strangle him.

            Zayn turns to face them both. “You asked _him_ for help? When it worked out so well last time?”

            Niall laughs. Takes a full step inside before Zayn can stop him. And God, the stench of his cologne is like fermented wildflowers and babies crying.

            Before he can stop it, somehow Zayn is sitting at Liam’s side in his study with Louis, Harry, and Niall all standing around. Or Niall standing. Everyone else sitting. Because he’s just a dick like that.

            Harry quickly brings Niall up to speed, with a few interjections from the two other participating parties.

            “So basically,” Niall says, “Lucian’s in Hell. Liam’s not a werewolf anymore. He hasn’t been since we sent his dad back. And the grand assumption among all of your bright minds is that he’s human right now?”

            Zayn tenses his hands into fists so tight, he can practically feel the tendons snapping.

            Harry whispers what they’re all thinking, “Yeah, so why hasn’t he woken up?”

            “It’s the venom probably,” Niall says, in a bored sort of way.

            “Venom?”

            “You know, the werewolf blood. It’s still pumping through him. Not enough to help him stay conscious, but his heart’s working just strong enough to keep him alive.”

            “No, no wait,” Louis says, “We took care of it. There’s no more venom in him. We leeched him.”

            “Thoroughly,” Zayn adds, the hairs on his neck bristling remembering that first groan when they’d started fixing his shoulder.

            “Well, it was a shit job then,” Niall says. He walks closer to Liam, close enough to press two fingers to the dip of his left ankle. Zayn has to stop himself from swatting the hand away.

            “It’s there still,” Niall says, voice calm and slow, “Listen. Don’t you hear it?”

            Zayn expects Louis to roll his eyes, and sure enough he does.

            But there’s something chilling about Niall’s demeanor. He’s holding his fingers there, breathing a little heavier than he should be. Listening, he said. Listening for what? Traces of werewolf venom?

            Zayn has his hand on Liam’s calf before he can process that.

            After a few seconds, he pulls it away.

            “Nothing,” he says, sighing. There had been the pain, like usual. And Liam’s steady beating heart, but no trace of the animalistic energy he’d felt before. No, the wolf was gone.

            Niall trains his eyes on him.

            “You need to listen deeper,” he says, “Deeper than his aura. He’s not B-grade. Lucian’s venom is the real deal. It’s _in_ him.”

            _I know, in his damn aura._ Zayn’s halfway to kicking Niall out. But he settles his hand back on Liam’s calf, cupping a wound there.

            This time he takes a deep breath and wills himself to focus.

            It could be minutes, but it feels longer. Liam’s aura is more than fuzzy, it’s like getting dropped into a snow storm in nothing but a parka and sandals.

            But it’s there, though. He can feel it, before he even sees the light. The werewolf venom is a titanic cathedral in the distance. A brickwork tower that seems like the only warmth for ages.

            He has a second more there, then he’s back by Liam’s side and Niall’s watching him.

            Zayn nods.

            “Yeah,” he says, to Louis and Harry, maybe to Liam too, “He’s.. it’s still there. I don’t know how, but it is.”

            “Maybe we didn’t give him enough of the tonic?” Harry suggests, half whispers.

            Louis sidles right in to wrap an arm around him.

Niall and Zayn both groan at the same time.

Then glare at each other.

            “Doesn’t matter either way,” Niall says, “He’s not full wolf anymore. He needs to be 100% werewolf for the tonic to work. Without that, the tonic might as well be water. Also, he’s crazy strong. Son of Lucian, remember?”

            “Then what now?” Harry asks.

            Niall takes a moment to smooth out a wrinkle in his shirt. “He stays in this weird limbo-coma thing until he dies or you get sick of him taking up space and kill him yourselves.”

            It takes a half hour of arguing before Zayn, forcing even breathing, asks Niall calmly if there are any other options.

            “Well,” Niall says, even in the dim light his hair looks like something someone on acid threw up, “You wouldn’t happen to have any werewolf venom lying around, would you?”   

            “I have some,” Louis pipes in, “Back at my place.”

            “You have werewolf venom?” Zayn asks.

            “Well, _essence_ of, of course, I’m not an idiot,” Louis adds. Then launches into an entirely too explicit story of why he and Harry keep werewolf essence in their nightstand drawer.

            Niall quickly chimes in before Harry looks like he might just try and launch himself from the window to make it stop, “Good enough. It should trick Liam’s body into making more of the real stuff at least.”

            “So we make him a full wolf again. Then we juice him?” Louis says.

            Zayn nods, “Then we try the spell again?”

            “Won’t work if you do it like before,” Niall says simply. The others all whip around to watch him, but he’s oblivious, counting the threads out on a tassel on the quilt, “He’s Lucian’s kid. The venom in him isn’t watered down hybrid saliva, it’s the real deal. If you want to suck it out of him, it’s going to have to be in an environment that’s.. better suited to handle all of the shit that’s definitely going to come your way if you try to change this guy with just Louis and his twink fleshlight to help you. My advice? Wait. Find a wide open place with soundproofed walls and wait. Maybe try again in a few years when you have like, a month to blow.”

            Zayn grates his teeth, “A few _years?_ ”

“Yeah, try fifty-sixty give or take. Ideally with him goosing the super human serum the entire time so he doesn’t eat you.”

            “No,” Zayn says. Just no. Not a chance. It’s too long. It’s insane.

            He doesn’t want to be a werewolf. He deserves a chance at being normal, right? They’d all but promised to help him get it. And not by waking him up as a monster again and telling him they can fix him in a half a century.

            No. Not a shot in hell. Zayn won’t do it.

            No amount of Louis rambling can sway him, either.

            Niall tries, “Either he’s human and he dies on this bed- probably in a few hours. Or we make him beastboy again and he gets a solid half-century.”

            “As a werewolf.”

            Zayn can see the tension in Niall shoulders where he’s struggling not to shrug them.

            “Could be worse.”

            “Worse than being miserable?”

            “Yeah,” Niall says, “Like being miserable and dead.”

            “He has a point,” Harry says, “We should do it. Wait. I mean.”

            Louis nods, and Zayn groans.

            Louis drops a hand on his arm. “What’s the problem? This is all we can do.”

            “I want to think about it for a second, alright.”

            Louis snorts, “Are you his caretaker now?”

            “Fucking feel like it,” Zayn mutters.

            Niall sighs.

            “Come on, trust me, alright? Do this and he lives.”

            Zayn could cut him. “And we’re supposed to just trust you? How do you know so much about werewolves anyway?”

            Niall stops fiddling with his cape and when he turns to Zayn, there’s a blush coursing down his neck. His eyes narrowed to icy slits.

            “Really, Zayn? You don’t trust _me_? Well, while you were busy eating Louis out back then, I was studying,” he snaps, “Asshole.”

            Louis pipes in before Zayn can, “Hey, what the fuck.”

            “It’s true,” Niall says, almost whining.

            From the other side of the bed, Harry croaks out an almost inaudible, “ _Wait, what?_ ”

            “Before I met you, darling,” Louis quickly assures him, “You weren’t even born yet.”

            Zayn’s all of two seconds away from kicking them all out. If not for Liam circling the drain, he’d have avoided Niall like the plague for an eternity if possible.

            “Why do you always do this?” he asks, “You’re so dramatic about everything.”

            Niall just folds his arms across his chest, sniffs a little, “You cheated on me.”

            “It was one goddamn kiss.”

            “And a bit of dancing,” Louis offers. Then quickly steps back to avoid a smack in the ribs.

            “Do you remember ’75,” Zayn adds, one note below shouting, “Or should I jog your memory? I think there were two hookers, right?”

            “Dancers!” Niall shrieks.

            “Naked?”

            “One was wearing boxers.”

            “Yeah,” Zayn growls, “and the other one was blowing you.”

            “Was not.”

            “I saw you!”

            It’s Harry eventually who reigns them all in. He talks over them, interrupting Niall halfway through his angry practiced list of all of Zayn’s faults. Somewhere around him telling Louis how Niall wasn’t a true blond. In the closest he can get to an angry shout, Harry calls them childish and reminds them that there’s a gross, dying man a foot away who they should probably spend a bit of energy on.

            And okay, Zayn’s heaving in air like he just ran a marathon. And Niall sort of looks like he did a round with a can of cherry red paint. But okay, he can get it together.

            One look at Liam sort of just failing at life there and he sobers right up.

            “Wait, just give me a minute, alright?”

            Or a second, maybe. A handful of minutes. Hours. _However long it takes_ , he wants to say. So Liam can be at least semi-conscious before they give him Louis and Harry’s venom essence.

He touches Liam’s arm, feels for his aura, then digs his fingernails into the edges and _squeezes_. A nice painful triple red eye.

            _If you could wake up now, that would be brilliant._

            Liam doesn’t even flinch.

            Niall takes a step forward, ugly fucking loafers sliding on the wood, “Zayn-”

            “Give me one goddamn second, okay?”

            If any of them can feel what he’s doing, it’s Louis. He’s by his side now, lowering his voice so the others don’t hear.

            “What are you looking for?”

            “Hope. Maybe. I.. I need him to feel this. I need him _to know_. At least to know.”

\--

            Liam wakes up on the precipice of a dream about a fire hydrant the size of the empire state building.

            He’s acutely aware that he’s drooling. And that there’s a new smudged face in the room that he doesn’t recognize.

            Zayn’s there, positioned by his side like before. Now, though, there’s something almost defensive about his stance. Arms crossed, stressed set to his shoulders and back.

            Louis and Harry are hip to hip on the same side of the bed. Harry’s unruly curls still clear despite the questionable state of Liam’s vision.

            The new man is standing at his feet by the bed, his hair an almost metallic yellowy bile color.

            He’s talking animatedly, hands flailing about as he chatters on in the thickest accent that makes Liam groan, it’s so loud. And the fact that he can only make out a word or two only helps to remind him that his head is pounding, and there’s a ringing in his ears that could shame the liberty bell.

            Louis dangles a bottle in front of Liam’s face. A tiny little blue thing with charms around the rim.

            “This is the tonic. It’s going to work, but really slowly. We have a while before your next moon anyway so you shouldn’t wolf out right away.”

            _Wolf out?_ Liam tries to ask it. But his lips are cement sealed shut. They were fixing him, weren’t they? They had been before, he’s sure.

            And before he passes back out, all Liam remembers is thinking that the tonic tastes like what he’s hoping Heaven feels like. A few gulps and he’s hazy breathings his way through something like reverence. Then he’s out cold again.

\--

            When Liam’s eyes close, Zayn feels like a weight is lifted off of his chest.

Everything he saw about Liam’s life. All of his aura that he glimpsed doesn’t tack into his conscious as much now that they’re hopefully on the right track. At least he’s not dying any time soon. Maybe not ideal, but good enough for now.

When Niall suggests that they stick around to watch him for a few hours just to be sure, Zayn doesn’t even object.

Louis walks the two blocks to the nearest convenience store and comes back with half a dozen bags of chips and powdered donuts and Harry helps Zayn and Niall clean up the bed the best they can. After they lay a sheet and blanket over Liam. He’s still running hot, but not absurdly so yet so they drag their chairs up closer to the bed and drop their snacks down between Liam’s legs.

While Harry blushes and stammers his way through how he and Louis met, Zayn rifles through his wine cupboard and comes back with a half finished bottle of white and a pinot with a few swigs left.

            Zayn drinks from the first, passes the bottle to Niall.

            Niall takes a thick swallow and dabs at his mouth with a handkerchief he pulls from God knows where.

            Louis takes a sip, just tasting, before shrugging and taking another.

            He starts to pass the bottle to Zayn, but Harry reaches for it first. When Louis all but smacks it out of his hand, they all laugh.

            Niall waves his hand at the bottle now propped up between Liam’s feet, “So you’ll stick your cock up his ass, but he can’t have a bit of wine?”

            Louis has the gall to seem offended. “I may be a-”

            “Pedophile,” Zayn quips.

            “-man with peculiar taste,” Louis bites back at him, “But I will not apologize for it.”

            To which Niall calmly reminds Louis of his phase in the early eighties of picking up only men with long hair and tattoos who sort of looked like they’d never showered.

            Louis responds by telling them all about Zayn’s brief, albeit passionate, affection for men in uniform.

            Zayn responds with the one time Niall asked him to wear a garter.

            He doesn’t even pretend not to deserve the smack across the ribs he gets.

            Laughs and the wine dwindles and Harry’s out like a light, breathing deeply into Louis’ lap.


End file.
